Today oil-poor South Africa uses FT synthesis to distill most of the nation's diesel from its extensive coal deposits.

One downside to the process, however, is the output of so-called mid-size hydrocarbonsmolecules with 4 to 8 carbon atomswhich can't be used as fuel.

Hydrocarbons consist of hydrogen and carbon atoms. The number of carbon atoms (anywhere from 1 to, say, 99) determines whether a particular hydrocarbon is a gas, liquid, or solid and whether it's the proper weight to burn as fuel.

Goldman says his new method can convert the otherwise low-value byproducts of the FT process into high-value fuels.

He says, for example, that two mid-size hydrocarbons with six carbon atoms each could be broken up and reassembled into a two-carbon molecule (ethane gas) and a ten-carbon molecule (diesel fuel).

The chemist thinks the breakthrough could deliver U.S. energy independence.

"The United States, for example, has 40 times as much energy in coal than we do in oil, and we have even more than that in oil shale," Goldman said.

"So I think Fischer-Tropsch chemistry is really the key to energy independence for the U.S., China, [and] India."

Key to Energy Independence?

In the U.S. the governors of Pennsylvania and Montana, both coal-rich states, have touted FT technology as a future source of homegrown diesel fuel.

Last September, Pennsylvania governor Edward Rendell said his state's government would buy fuel from a planned FT plant in the state designed to convert waste coal from mining operations into low-sulfur diesel.

Montana governor Brian Schweitzer has expressed even more ambitious plans. He believes Montana's 120 billion tons (109 billion metric tons) of coal could supply the nation's gas, diesel, and jet fuel needs for the next 40 years.

Because FT plants are expensive to build and maintain (an entry-level plant falls in the range of 1.5 billion U.S. dollars), the higher cost of FT synthetic fuels have made them too pricey for U.S. markets in the past.

"When oil was $20 a barrel, it really wasn't considered economical," Goldman, the Rutgers University chemist, said.

But today's high oil prices are now tipping the scales in favor of alternative fuels.